‘Little Miss Sociopath’ Review
Stars: Jenny Tran, Brendan Michael Coughlin, Jade Williams, Pamela Shaw, Lisa Scott, Victoria Goodhart, Eric Billitzer, Andy Au, Sonny King, Ashley Zambos, Veronika Bonell | Written and Directed by Miv Evans
Comedies about death aren’t a particularly big genre of movie, but there have been plenty of them. It is a difficult subject to tackle when you’re also trying to make people laugh, but that’s exactly what first-time writer and director Miv Evans tries to do with Little Miss Sociopath.
In the movie, Clementine (played by Jenny Tran) suffers the loss of her father, which leads to her living and looking after her stepmom, and the two don’t exactly see eye to eye. During this time, Clementine meets Adam (played by Brendan Michael Coughlin) and while starting a relationship, the couple also start plans that involve killing off old people and taking their money through their wills. The only problem, well, not the only one, but the moral dilemma happens when Clementine starts enjoying spending time with the old people that she plans on killing.
It’s actually a pretty decent premise and there’s enough good things going on to make Little Miss Sociopath somewhat enjoyable. The two lead performances from Tran and Coughlin are both good. Tran’s character does come across a little bit annoying and for me, not as relatable as I think the director would have liked but neither of these things are down to the performance. Tran plays the part well, while Coughlin’s performance is a bit more up and down. At times he seems to be just running through his lines and at other times he hits those lines perfectly and is full of charisma. Maybe that’s how he was playing the character but it didn’t come across that way. I liked the idea of hearing the inner dialogue of Clementine and that felt like something quite clever that gave the character something a little different.
My main issue with Little Miss Sociopath was the tone. Now, because it’s a dark comedy about death, this was always going to be a possible issue. The whole film feels very ‘light’ and ‘fluffy’, so the impact of any death becomes very low. I almost didn’t really care about any of them, as there was very little consequence to Adam and Clementine’s actions. With the couple doubting themselves a little because they kind of like the old people, it doesn’t really matter when they are literally killing them for money. Yes, it’s a comedy and maybe I should give it a bit of leeway because of that but I needed to see more care about those actions. The comedy doesn’t seem dark here to me, it’s just that death is involved in the main story. It’s also not a laugh-out-loud comedy, it’s more of a film that has you smiling occasionally. So while it runs along at a quick enough pace, it never hits any highs when it comes to laughs (if I’m being fair, there’s no huge lows either).
This is a promising start by director Miv Evans, who shows she can work with a low budget and still provide an original and mostly entertaining movie. Movie goers looking for something a little bit different could do much worse than checking out Little Miss Sociopath. Just don’t go expecting anything too dark, this is much more light-hearted despite the core subject matter.
